Paper Number

1373

Abstract

Cloud brokers are intermediaries supporting the evaluation, selection, and implementation of cloud services. Especially small and medium-sized enterprises with limited technical competencies struggle with a complex and non-transparent market, selecting and combining services from different cloud service providers. They need guidance in the pre-adoption phase to successfully handle selection decisions. Using decisional guidance theory, we have designed a cloud broker platform that aims to provide such guidance. The results of its evaluation show how such a platform improves selection decisions by reducing complexity and structuring the selection process. They also show that the platform’s usefulness may be limited in the case of very complex cloud services depending, for example, on the degree of customization needs. Our study provides design knowledge for decisional guidance (in the context of cloud broker platforms) and shows how cloud service selection can be implemented in practice.

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